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Rogers Communications purchases The Score Television Network

As reported for most of yesterday, and confirmed early this morning, The Score has been bought by Rogers Communications for $167-million. This will give Rogers control of The Score television network, but only a 10% stake in The Score’s digital properties including it’s website and blogs, and it’s extremely popular Score Mobile and ScoreFC mobile apps.

The Score has been up for sale for a while now, and had been looking for around $200-million as a good purchase price. Though, with an increasing debt and dwindling ownership of sports-rights properties, that mark seemed like, and was, a far reach. The sale also includes a $12-million investment from Rogers in Score Digital, which includes having access to their digital and mobile offerings.

The Score has always run a distant third behind Canadian behemoths TSN and Sportsnet. This has been even more prevalent in the past year or two as The Score lost rights to such properties as the English Premier League, Serie A, and Toronto Raptors, and on-screen personnel such as Brendan Dunlop and veterans Tim Micallef and Sid Seixeiro.

Courtesy of Globe & Mail media reporter Steve Ladurantaye, here are some other brief notes on the deal:

The Score will be rebranded as a Sportsnet property, with no word on the format of the new channel, and what will happen in regard to the sports rights that The Score currently holds (eg: WWE, NCAA football). They will also takeover Score HQ on King Street.

Rogers will also takeover The Score’s closed captioning service as well as ownership of their MMA franchise, The Score Fighting Series.

The Score has around 250 employees. Score Digital will keep 50 staff, with the rest either being used at Rogers or let go.

These days, I rarely find myself watching The Score anymore. When I first moved to Toronto just over three years ago, I found myself liking their programming as a solid alternative to TSN and Sportsnet with shows like Score Tonight, Morency, and The Footy Show. When Tim and Sid jumped ship to greener pastures, and The Footy Show was taken off the air as a weekly show, that was pretty much the point where I had no reason to tune in, other than occasional morning highlights. Now, I pretty much just settle for posts and podcast downloads from The Footy Show and The Basketball Jones guys.

That channel is 999, and I haven’t watched it long enough to notice, but any video on the screen is small and seems to be commercials and magazine-type features. But I could see Rogers merging this channel with The Score to produce a sports news channel, following the model of ESPNews and CityNews Channel.

Rogers Sportsnet News – all the NHL highlights, analysis and press conferences you need, for 57 minutes every hour! (Not the snappiest slogan, but you get the picture)

I hope that this deal is rejected by the CRTC. With Bell potentially getting control of Astral Media and now Rogers taking over The Score, there is TOO MUCH media consolidation going on here in Canada. Hopefully I am not the only one who feels this way.

This is ridiculous. Having been in Canada for 16 years, I grew up with Headline Sports which later became The Score. James Sharman and Co. have been the best voice for soccer in this country and I hope that they take the Footy Show somewhere else or James and KJ make it their own entity because Rogers will just ruin it like everything else they touch. I really hope TSN hires James and KJ and gives them the platform to continue their great work.

Continued….. Part of me is actually happy now that BeIN Sport is about to enter Canada. We will finally have a third competitor for the big 2 that has more money than both of them combined. That should make things interesting in the years to come. Let’s hope the BeIN Sport Canada is a success right off the bat.

I feel sorry for anybody that is laid off due to this purchase. I agree there’s way too much media consolidation here. I wonder if they’ll be able to modify the license, and not have to always have a ticker. (it’s a little annoying during live events).
Wonder what will happen to the Footy Show (the only thing I used to watch on the Score).

Is BeIN Sport coming to Canadian airwaves for sure? Any details? Hope it’s not like Sportsnet World where we have to pay $18? a month!

Yep. Less voices means less diversity, less opinions and less choice in the media. If someone wants to watch college football or wrestling if the CRTC approves this deal, consumers here in Canada will be forced to buy for example the sports pak to watch college football or resort to buying a grey market dish in order to watch the WWE. We will pay for this through our wallets and quite frankly the CRTC doesn’t care because they are in bed with Bell & Rogers. Absolutely disgusting.

So much I could say. I know when was younger used to watch The score more with the footy and Gerry Dee, cabbie, and some funny guys on show, Always liked watching some highlights on score, but TSN always being best with stuff and showing stuff and now sportsnet is jumping up there with soccer and good stuff, it’s weird how Sportsnets buying score though, wonder what will happen and change but we will see.

Be interesting to see how it gets rebranded. The Footy Show deserves to be kept, as Kristian Jack is the best football analyst in north america as far as I’m concerned. I actually like the score, and prefer to watch highlights on it. I have a hard time watching sportscentre these days with how all tsn cares about is hockey.

The score is the best for showing highlights mainly cuz they dony have a panel of bumbling idiots to talk about hockey for the first 20 min. They get to the point. TSN’s quality is going down hill but they’ll never be beat in acquiring sports prpoerties because they have the money and thats what talks to the leagues.

Goodbye Score….. You could smell it coming for quite sometime now the exit of Tim & Sid , Cabbie , Kouly , etc….. I loved the Score tonight their coverage of Canadian College sports , Serie A footy , James & KJ & much more. It just seems like they lost all of their good talent to other networks and rights to anything worth watching, a real shame .

The only reason we ever watched the score was for The Footy Show. James and KJ are the best soccer analysts in Canada. They are soccerologists. If Rogers is smart they will make the Footy Show a feature in their lineup.